Major Altcoins Face Steep Declines Amid Market Pressure
Looking at the data from 2025, it’s clear that several prominent altcoins had a particularly rough year. Celestia (TIA) dropped about 90%, Optimism (OP) fell 84.5%, and the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET/ASI) lost around 84% of its value. These aren’t minor corrections—they’re substantial declines that reflect broader market dynamics and specific project challenges.
I think what’s interesting here is how these weren’t just random drops. Each project faced its own unique set of problems that compounded with general market weakness. The late-year sell-off certainly didn’t help matters, turning many high-beta tokens red, but there were deeper issues at play.
Celestia’s Unlock Problems and Usage Concerns
Celestia’s situation seems particularly instructive. The token fell from about $5.50 at the start of 2025 to $0.46 near year-end. That’s a dramatic move by any measure. The main driver appears to have been unlock and overhang dynamics—Celestia’s vesting schedule and 2024-2026 unlock cadence kept steady selling pressure throughout the year.
By summer, TIA was viewed as a textbook post-airdrop unwind. CoinDesk analysts tied its continuing emissions to thin liquidity, which makes sense when you think about it. But perhaps more telling was the Celestia Foundation’s move in August to buy back 43.45 million TIA from Polychain Capital for around $62.5 million.
The intention was to steady token supply, but the community reaction was skeptical. One user on X commented that it felt like “a new level of grift”—essentially taking tokens from one investor who was dumping and giving them to another who would dump later. That perception matters in crypto.
Another issue was weak fee capture. Independent on-chain analyses repeatedly highlighted very low data utilization and fee revenue—around $60 per day earlier in 2025. That’s not much for a project of this scale. According to Chain Catcher, the network could generate about $5.2 million in annual fee revenue if used correctly, but the gap between potential and reality was stark.
Optimism’s Persistent Unlock Schedule
Optimism faced similar problems with token unlocks, but with its own twist. OP lost 84.5% year-to-date, falling from $2.06 to $0.27. The project faced recurring token unlocks throughout the year: late-May, late-April, and a scheduled December 31 tranche of around $8.6 million. Each of these added token supply during periods of weak demand.
Layer-2 competition was another significant headwind. Even as Optimism shipped fault-proofs and progressed on the Stage 1 decentralization path in 2024 and 2025, trading still reflected L2 sector fatigue. By September, media coverage framed OP as one of the L2 laggards, and the slide deepened into Q4.
It’s worth noting that large cliff unlocks (single unlocks exceeding $5 million) scheduled around this period included several major projects, not just OP. But the timing was particularly unfortunate given broader market conditions.
ASI Alliance’s Operational Challenges
The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance presents a different kind of story. This collaboration between SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol was founded during the 2024 AI hype wave. But in 2025, it lost around 84% of its value, dropping from $1.60 to about $0.20.
The problems started with the multi-token merger itself. The FET, AGIX, and OCEAN conversion didn’t go smoothly, creating operational noise. Several exchanges supported auto-conversions while Coinbase declined to facilitate migrations, adding uncertainty around flows.
Then in October 2025, Ocean Protocol exited the ASI Alliance, prompting governance disputes, legal threats, and a drop in the FET price around that time. The ASI board temporarily suspended the conversion bridge while seeking legal advice.
Late-2025 risk-off sentiment also spilled over into AI tokens more broadly. According to Coingecko reports, AI was no longer the most profitable crypto narrative in 2025. Crypto AI coins lost around 50% in price during the year, while real-world assets (RWA) gained about 180%.
Broader Market Context
It’s important to remember that late-2025 macro and cross-market stress broadly hit crypto. Tariff shocks, tight liquidity, and tech-led risk aversion compounded token-specific supply overhangs. End-of-year reviews documented the wholesale risk-off turn and sharp liquidations across digital assets.
But these three projects—Celestia, Optimism, and the ASI Alliance—seem to represent something more than just general market weakness. They each faced specific structural challenges that made their declines particularly severe.
Tokenomics matter, perhaps more than we sometimes acknowledge. Unlock schedules, supply dynamics, and actual usage metrics can’t be ignored when evaluating projects. And operational execution—like smooth token migrations or stable partnerships—clearly impacts market perception.
I’m not saying these projects are finished or anything like that. Markets go through cycles, and 2025 was clearly a difficult year for many altcoins. But these cases offer useful lessons about what can go wrong when multiple negative factors converge.
